A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

The Sonnet Lover is Carol Goodman's fifth novel. The novel, like her previous novels, starts with a murder mystery and then focuses on a literary mystery that is closely connected to the murder mystery. Dr. Rose Asher is a Comparative Literature professor at Hudson College, a private liberal arts school in New York City. What exactly Comparative Literature is, I'm not entirely sure... It is never really defined or explained in the book and I don't think we had Comparative Literature at Kutztown University. At a soiree that wraps up the college's student film contest, one of Asher's male students falls to his death. The police rule it a suicide, but Asher wonders if it was really an accident, a suicide or was it murder. Asher travels to Italy to search for the sonnets of a sixteenth century female poet who may or may not have been the Dark Lady of 28 of Shakespeare's sonnets. This female poet's sonnets hold the key to unlocking both the secrets of the presen...